


river take them, river drown them

by scarlett_the_seachild



Series: on the heels of eden [1]
Category: 18th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Self-Hatred, Sexual Content, Sexuality Crisis, Suicidal Thoughts, alexander has attachment issues, but there's a happy ending I promise, laurens has questionable logic, like a lot of it, vague daddy issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 11:24:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10555494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarlett_the_seachild/pseuds/scarlett_the_seachild
Summary: Following a fight with Laurens, after having not heard from him in a month during his self-imposed exile to South Carolina, Alexander is ordered by Washington to burn flour mills along the Schuylkill River before they fall into enemy hands. Things do not go according to plan.A character study of sorts. Lots of angst, self-esteem issues, internalised homophobia and miscommunication (or lack thereof entirely.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello there. This is my first Hamilton fic, based on a section I read from Ron Chernow's biography which details the escapade with "Light-Horse Harry" Lee on the Schuykill River. all historical details come from the same book - they're probably entirely inaccurate as I mostly selected names and constructed a somewhat sensical plotline but I included them more for authenticity than accuracy. there are also probably a number of anachronisms...sorry about that.
> 
> As stated in the tags, this fic includes a character battling issues of self-hatred, repressed sexuality, suicidal thoughts and emotional trauma. It also includes another character, dealing with attachment, self-esteem and abandonment issues. basically they are two people who handle things very badly but find that all things are easier upon the acceptance of a helping hand.
> 
> title is from "River" by ibeyi

A month’s separation from a residence that has started to become steadily familiar can do things to a person. Soften you up, make you think fondly on hardships that had itched and pained something awful at the time. There was not a soul in Washington’s “family” who would think affectionately on waking up in the middle of the night, skin raw with bed bugs the size of fingernails burying into the weak crevices of your groin and armpits, places where you’re laid bare and vulnerable. And in the morning, nothing to relieve the sores where your own nails had scratched and scratched except cold water from the one pail, the muddied surface freshly swimming with corpses of those who couldn’t hack the soldier life, tiny insect arms still waving as if having second thoughts.

Laurens, who had been born soft and didn’t need nostalgia to powder his hands further, had spent several nights lying awake, gritting his teeth and clawing at his own skin until the blood pooled, or else grimacing at the sight of the water pail which some dirty bastard had taken as a toilet, and headed for the river. He had coaxed himself to sleep imagining feather pillows and cotton sheets the same way the others thought of their mistresses; had swallowed plates of barely-dead rabbit with eyes squeezed shut, imagining caviar. But thirty days surrounded by all the comfort God’s wealth could buy; duck down pillows, heated water, lice-free clothing and Laurens found his skin still itched, only this time it was for the rough-woven cloth of his barrack, the cringe-worthy sear of cheap wine, the smell of gunpowder and wood smoke instead of lavender.

Sitting on his horse at the edge of the encampment, he surveyed the scene with a heart that felt tight, as if someone was gripping it hard in their fist. On the journey back from South Carolina he had forced himself to meditate on the realities that awaited him: _bed-bugs John, they’re literal parasites that lay eggs in your skin, and when was the last time you bit into a biscuit and it didn’t have a fucking worm in it_ but it had not done the trick. The sight of the camp, more familiar to him now than the stucco walls and pearly pillars of his family’s estate, sent a wave of relief crashing over him that was almost overwhelming in its intensity, and he rode into the army settlement with the feeling that he was breathing properly for the first time since he’d left.

McHenry was waiting for him at the headquarters. He had speared a slice of apple with his knife and was eating it off the blade as if it were a piece of cooked meat on a skewer. He raised the knife slightly in acknowledgement as John walked in, the point wavering gingerly close to his eye.

“Welcome back,” he greeted him. “How was it _down South?”_

McHenry always did these last words in a nauseating parody of a Carolinian drawl. Despite his best efforts, the Irishman’s mock-American accent was already enough to make one’s skin crawl. The further down South he went, the more Laurens wanted to throw him out a window.

“Warm,” Laurens replied. “Sticky. Fucking insect season.”

McHenry grinned showing several broken teeth. “Wrong person to complain to, brother,” he said. “I think my fleas have fleas. Tell me you at least managed to take a bath while you were there.”

“Sure did,” Laurens confirmed. “Lavender. Wanna smell?”

He stuck out his wrist for McHenry to sniff. After inhaling deeply, McHenry’s eyes closed and his head rolled back against the wood of the chair. _“Uuugghh,”_ he groaned, breathing out. “You smell like a whore’s armpit.”

“Thanks man,” said Laurens.

He shed his coat, draping it over the backs of one of the other chairs and stomped outside to where the water pail sat glimmering in the sun. He broke the surface with both hands, sloshing water over his face. From inside, McHenry watched him with concern.

“I really wouldn’t man,” he called. “I don’t know how long that’s been sitting out there.”

“It’s cool,” replied Laurens.

He splashed water over the back of his neck, behind his ears, resisting the urge to tip the whole bucket over his head. It felt so good and clean, regardless of bug corpses and whatever else had collected into it since the last time someone had the good sense to empty it. When he was done he dried his face sloppily on the frill of his sleeve, letting his neck and hair drip, and returned to where McHenry was still hacking at his apple, his eyes roving over a bunch of papers he had clasped in his left hand.

“I’d really rather you kept your eyes on the blade if you’re going to be a savage,” Laurens told him.

“Ooh John Laurens goes home to daddy for a month,” McHenry sang in a high, mocking voice. “Comes back throwing words like ‘savage’ around. Come on man, what did they feed you? I bet you stuffed your face with partridge and parfait and panettone-”

“Naw,” Laurens shook his head, resting it on the triangle of his arms and leaning back. “We mostly just inject ourselves with molasses and wash it down with some expired politic. Speaking of, you got anything for a hungry man to eat?”

McHenry nodded and jerked over his shoulder with his knife. “Check the cupboard.”

Laurens shimmied around the tiny area that wasn’t taken up by McHenry’s hulking form and opened the cupboard. It was pretty much cleaned out except for a knob of hard bread and a cube of cheese, streaked marble-blue with mould. Laurens’ spirits soared even higher as he fished out both. There was a bottle of wine on the table at McHenry’s elbow and Laurens took a swig, sluicing the vinegary liquid around his mouth with relish. It tasted miles better than anything he had yet stolen from his father’s cellar.

“Where are the others?” he asked, stuffing the bread and cheese into his mouth.

“Richard, Tench and Alex are on patrol,” McHenry replied. “We got word the redcoats have doubled the number of spies in the area; Alex caught one just two weeks ago masquerading as a Son, he probably told you. Fitz is in Philly and Laf’s with the General, overseeing supplies or some shit. They should be back soon.”

“And you?” asked Laurens, craning his neck to get a look at whatever McHenry was reading. “What’s the General got you doing?”

“Drafting a letter to Rush,” McHenry answered with a grimace. “Much good it’ll do. We’re chewing the leather off our own boots and all the man does is chat shit about how Washington allows himself to be governed by Green…and Knox…and Alex.”

“He mentioned Alexander by name?” Laurens raised an eyebrow and the bottle to his lips.

“They _all_ mention Alexander by name,” McHenry rolled his eyes, immediately adopting a sing-song, pompous voice as he quoted: “‘And Colonel Hamilton, one of his aides, a young man of twenty-one years’. He could hardly get more specific.”

“He could,” said John. “Alexander just turned twenty-two.”

John finished the bread and cheese while scanning what he could make out of McHenry’s letter over his shoulder. Washington would have to rewrite it; there was a whole paragraph that despite McHenry’s inserts and crossings out Laurens knew would never fly. It was a hard job putting words in Washington’s mouth, a job that Laurens was getting better at and only Alexander had mastered. Out of all of them, he was the only one who could put to paper the General’s thoughts as if they had sprung straight from his lips, only more eloquently. These days, Washington didn’t even bother glancing over Alexander’s drafts but merely scrawled his signature at the bottom without glancing up from whatever he was doing. Laurens would be envious, only he wasn’t sure how well he would be able to handle the ability to think like George Washington.

Laurens drained the last of the wine, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He was just scouring the room for anything else he could eat when at that moment, the door opened and Lafayette marched in.

“John Laurens!” he announced, throwing out his arms in typically theatrical style. “Welcome home, my dear.”

“Good to see you Gil,” said Laurens, stepping naturally into Lafayette’s encompassing embrace. “How you doing?”

“Very well I think,” Lafayette replied, clapping Laurens on the back as he released him. “Although it has not been the same without you. Very quiet, very _clean._ I see a month amongst civilised folk has not taught you to take any better care of yourself, you naughty boy.”

“It was do my own laundry or allow a slave to do it for me,” answered Laurens, shrugging his dirty cuff out of Lafayette’s reach. “And I wasn’t about to do my own laundry.”

Lafayette shook his head despairingly. “You make my heart very heavy, John,” he told him sorrowfully. “Still, we have missed you. Alexander has been _moping.”_

“Has he?” said Laurens indifferently.

“Yes he has,” Lafayette had dropped the convivial warmth instinctive upon seeing John again and was peering at him now with a steely, narrowed gaze, as if trying to reach his soul. “He complains that you have not been answering his letters. What happened? Are you two fighting?”

“No,” said John shortly, cross at the way that Lafayette always managed to refer to them as if they were a squabbling couple. It was less like the predictable, well-meaning banter he was used to from the others in that Lafayette’s remarks were offhand, never coarse and often accidental, and thus much more difficult to laugh off. “I’ve been wrestling with the Sons with one arm and fending off my father with the other. I didn’t have a hand spare to respond to Alexander’s whining about not being picked for some guerrilla attack-”

“-Ah, so you have been reading them?” interrupted Lafayette with a smile. Laurens cursed himself.

“Sure,” he replied, shrugging carelessly. “Although I could have gotten the gist from just the one. So Washington still won’t pick him for command, huh?”

Lafayette shook his head. “It has become a problem,” he said, scratching the back of his head ruefully. “Every day the tensions between them grow. Alexander is becoming more and more frustrated, complaining that he is not being given enough responsibility, that Washington doesn’t trust him, the usual bollocks. The General has said that he cannot afford to lose him but he will not listen.”

“And I guess you’ve all pointed out to him that he has more responsibility than the rest of us put together,” said Laurens.

Lafayette pursed his thin lips together into a straight line. “I am sure he is aware of that,” he said reedily. “But it is the wrong kind of charge than Alexander is looking for. He feels that Washington has him chained to a desk instead of maximising his full potential. Put simply, I think Alexander would prefer it if Washington trusted him with less if it meant he could fly a little closer to danger once in a while. He has become restless for action. You know how he gets.”

Laurens made a non-committal noise. He did know, not least from his own first-hand experience with Alexander’s restlessness but also because he had detailed the same in his last letter to John. In it, Alexander had transcended peevish, sounding positively upset as he related his frustration with Washington. Laurens had imagined him blinking back tears (Alexander was an angry crier) as his hand speeded furiously across the page, splashing ink and almost puncturing the paper with the sheer force of his quill.

“Tell me about Howe in Philadelphia,” John ordered. “Alex was…vague.”

McHenry cringed and Lafayette released a long groan, lifting a thin, white, aristocratic hand to his eyes. “It was _terrible,”_ he replied emphatically. “Alexander was too sanguine. We paid for the error.”

“Sanguine as in optimistic or sanguine as in bloodthirsty?”

“Both? He had been spoiling for a fight for weeks. When General Howe crossed into Philadelphia he was convinced we could thwart their entrance and wrote to Morris to convince him to attack. The slaughter was…horrifying. 1,300 of our own men killed or wounded at Brandywine, twice the losses of the British.”

Laurens let out a low whistle, ending with a quiet swear word while McHenry shook his head. “How’d the General take it?”

“About as well as you would expect. He told Alex off for being overeager. Alexander replied by saying that if he had had control of the troops it would have been the redcoats giving the river its colour. A quarrel ensued.”

“Jesus,” said John. He could imagine it; the others sat in here around the table, playing cards and carefully avoiding each other’s’ gaze while they pretended not to hear Washington bellowing at Hamilton in the room next door. The General didn’t often lose his temper; not because he was calm by nature but because he worked very hard to keep it an inch below the surface. However, when he did let loose, the tempest that followed was always one of Biblical proportions, and more often than not it was Alexander who caught the brunt of it.

“Fuck it,” said McHenry suddenly, tossing his papers to the side. “I’m done. _Done._ Washington’s just gonna rewrite the bloody thing anyway.”

“Probably,” Lafayette agreed. “Let’s play some cards. Anyone for whist?”

“I’ll play,” said John, pleased for the chance to win against someone who wasn’t his sister.

They played three rounds, John winning two, Lafayette one and McHenry none. Laurens attributed his good fortune to having had very little else to do at home; it was either stay indoors and fritter away the idle hours playing drawing room games or else go outside and be forced to deal with the embittered cocktail of nausea and memory that was always brought on by his visits to the estate. Outside the sky darkened from rosy lilac to dusky mauve, streaks of reddish gold lacerating the fading clouds like scars. McHenry fished out another bottle of wine and they passed it between them, mostly not talking except for calling tricks and occasional exclamations of “you bastard”.

It was getting on for evening by the time familiar, upbeat voices could be heard, growing louder as they approached the open window. A minute later the door was opening and Tilghman, Meade and Alexander were traipsing through, chattering obliviously to one another. Then Tilghman spotted Laurens and cried: “John!” and Alexander snapped to attention.

He looked first surprised then perturbed, blue eyes darkening as his brow wriggled in a frown. Laurens had no chance to remark teasingly on this less than ecstatic expression as he was pulled into a hug from Tilghman and a fist bump with Meade.

“How you been, brother?” Tilghman asked, clasping Laurens’ sides. “You look thin, man. Don’t tell me they didn’t feed you.”

Laurens shrugged. “Must have left my appetite here.”

“That’s hard luck,” Meade told him. “I can’t remember the last time we had a meal that wasn’t beef jerky.”

“Did you bring us back anything pretty?” asked Tilghman.

“Yeah,” Laurens nodded. “How does ‘money’ sound?”

Meade pulled a face as if he had said ‘socks’. “No offence to your pops, but flour or munitions would have been better,” he said apologetically. “Our paper is getting less and less good here. Last time we went into town we had a lot of trouble getting supplies; most folks only wanna sell to redcoats now.”

So they _would_ have preferred socks. “Sorry,” Laurens shrugged. “My dad doesn’t really think in the concrete. He prefers to keep things conceptual.”

 _Par example:_ his support of abolitionism.

“Come across any spies on patrol?” he asked.

Tilghman shook his head. “Slow day,” he said. “Maybe tomorrow.”

“And what about you, Alex?” Laurens turned, sensing the lack of communication between them had stretched on too long to remain unnoticeable. “Slow day? I’m not gonna lie bro, I sort of missed you coming running to greet me.”

He kept his tone light, jovial. Alexander’s matching gaze was anything but. Instead he stared accusingly at Laurens, and said: “You didn’t answer my letters.”

Laurens felt a swooping feeling in his stomach, as if it had suddenly been seized by the claws of a tremendous eagle. He opened his mouth to answer but was saved by Lafayette, clapping him on the shoulder. “Ah, he had his hands full, didn’t you John?” he said heartily. “No matter, you’re back with us and we will keep them busy so they don’t stray off too far again. Gentlemen, come join us. Where is the General?”

“On his way,” answered Meade as he and Tilghman pulled up chairs either side of McHenry. “Goddamn I hope he’s in a good mood…it’s high time we had some cheer…”

Alexander drew up a chair beside John. Laurens could feel his eyes on him, still frowning and reproachful. He didn’t look at him but was hyperaware of his nearness, the pressing heat of his arm even through his coat as he shuffled his chair forwards. The back of his neck felt very hot; he resisted the urge to loosen his cravat. As Alex reached for his cards his bare wrist brushed against John’s; instinctively he flinched, drawing his hand away quickly.

Washington arrived half an hour later. Laurens rose and the General shook his hand warmly, clapped him on the back and inquired about his stay. He asked after his father’s health, nodding impassively at the mention of the gifts Laurens had brought back with him, although John had the feeling he too would have preferred to hear ‘socks’. Then, after telling him with real sincerity that it was good to have him back, he turned to the rest of the group, inquiring after updates on the day’s work. He looked grimly satisfied upon Tilghman’s report that there were no spies in the area as far as they were aware, picked up McHenry’s draft letter and said “Hmm,” before putting it in his pocket and saying he would give it a good look later. Then he turned to Alexander.

“What’s the status on Howe?” he asked.

“Burgoyne is still heading towards New York,” he replied instantly. “Already he has over a third of his troops moving down the Hudson. My guess is he plans to stay there rather than boost the general’s forces but it’s only a matter of days before Howe reaches the capital.”

“Do we have a chance at stopping them?”

Alexander hesitated, his eyes flashing towards Laurens who held his gaze before returning it back to Washington. “Honestly sir,” he said after swallowing. “It would be futile to try and halt the advance now. Our best shot at causing any damage is seizing control of resources, before they get to them first.”

Washington’s jaw tightened and Laurens could see a muscle jumping there, a tell-tale sign that the General was struggling to keep his cool while inside wild forces raged. At last he nodded curtly, a mechanism that seemed to send the gears in his mind turning as that great machine worked overtime to adapt to the situation it had resigned itself to. Laurens imagined a marvellous apparatus, deconstructing problems and puzzling out fresh solutions, evident in his next address to Lafayette.

“We have enough grain to see us through the winter?”

Lafayette made an ambiguous gesture. “If we reduce rations and revise distribution,” he said. “…Probably?”

Washington nodded at him. “To your discretion,” he said. “Tilghman, write to Congress, ask for an increase on the last order they promised. Hamilton, a word if you please.”

Alexander nodded and got to his feet. Laurens saw that his jaw too was clenched, as if in uncanny emulation of the General, however as he followed Washington to his office his face was quite calm. The moment the door closed quietly behind them, the others exhaled the breaths they had been holding in and resumed the card game in mutual silence. Laurens dealt and called his tricks and listened with half an ear as the others called theirs but his attention was on the conversation happening on the other side of the door.

Lafayette trumped his Ace, winning his third trick. His eyes were on Laurens as he slid the cards over to his side of the table, Laurens who was still watching the door. They were speaking louder now, Washington not quite shouting but not quite together either, Hamilton’s return sarky and sharp, cutting in its witty truths. McHenry coughed subtly into his fist, alerting Laurens that it was his turn to play; he put down a card without looking at it, his thoughts and spirits buzzing with the exchange in the other room.

At long last the door opened and Alexander walked out. He looked irritated rather than furious, high spots of colour appearing on his high cheekbones, and as he crossed the room he sent Laurens a bright, slicing glare that although was not meant for him was unmistakeable in its meaning. He closed the door sharply behind him, just stopping shy of slamming it. Laurens leaned back in his chair with a sigh, conscious of Lafayette still watching him.

“Looks as if my presence is needed elsewhere,” he said apologetically, getting heavily to his feet. “Catch you kids on the flip side.”

“Later man,” said Meade, already dealing out the next hand.

Laurens waved them goodbye and followed Alexander out the room without a backwards glance, lest he meet the more inquisitive gaze of the Frenchman. He found Alex standing in the centre of the cohabitated barracks, waiting for John with his arms crossed over his chest. His youthful, boyish face was distorted in a sneer that dwarfed any trace of its occasional naïveté and his eyes too were narrow and dark. The blood beneath his skin, which always lay very close to the surface, now flooded his cheeks so that along with the naturally effeminate stance that was so particular to him, he looked more like a scorned belle than a disgruntled soldier.

“Good talk?” asked Laurens.

“I am this close John,” Alexander snarled, lifting his forefinger and thumb to better make his point. _“This close.”_

“This close to what,” said Laurens, amused.

“To the limit? To breaking point? The human machine is an organic one Laurens and there is only so much pressure it can take. I have been tried and tested to my limit, yet Washington insists on challenging me further,” Alexander blinked and Laurens saw his eyes were glittering freshly. _Such_ an angry-crier. No wonder the others teased him mercilessly, it wasn’t as if he made it any easier for himself.

“Did he give you shit about the Howe thing?” Laurens asked.

“What?” Alexander blinked, frowning at John as if he had asked something very stupid. “No. That’s…we’re over that. He knows it wasn’t my fault. This is about Burgoyne. He’s isolated in the upper valley, practically _begging_ to be annihilated and if Washington would just _let me lead a force down there-”_

“-But he said no,” Laurens finished for him because it looked like Alexander might take a while.

“I don’t understand,” Alexander snapped. “I don’t _get_ it.  I’m meant to be more than this and he knows it, but instead of allowing me to do who I was born to he has me licking envelopes, delivering packages, making coffee. And I know what it is, it’s not because I’m indispensable or that he doesn’t trust me with command or any of that. It’s because he has this fucked up fantasy that I’m his little problematic child or something, like it’s his goddamn responsibility to protect me from myself.”

“As if that’s the last thing you need,” Laurens smirked.

Alexander nodded aggressively. “Right!” he exclaimed. “As if the last thing _any_ of us needs is another bloody father figure-”

He broke off suddenly, stared at John, looking as though he’d been struck. “I’m sorry John,” he said, eyes wide. “I wasn’t thinking.”

“It’s alright,” said Laurens quickly. “It’s fine.”

Alexander still looked disturbed. Running a hand through his hair, hanging long in loose brown waves just a little below his shoulders he looked away distractedly, chewing his lip as if mulling over troubling thoughts. “How was home?” he asked eventually.

Laurens shrugged. The smile had slipped off his face somewhere between Alexander’s apology and Alexander biting his lip and he had lost the thread that had allowed him to fix it on in the first place. “It was alright,” he replied dully. “We mostly kept out of each other’s way, so.”

Alex nodded and Laurens thought he was going to ask about the plans for the battalion when he said again: “You didn’t answer my letters.”

Laurens closed his eyes, briefly, opened them again. “I know,” he said. “I was busy. Sorry.”

“I thought maybe you needed space. I wouldn’t have minded. You could have just said-”

“-Alexander,” Laurens interrupted. “Please.”

Alexander looked away, blinking hard beneath his frown. He looked as though he were deciding something. Laurens released a sharp breath through his nose, was about to relax the muscles in his shoulders when Alexander spoke again and this time his words came out in a rush.

“I waited a month, John. _A month_. For a single word, for some reassurance that you still wanted to be friends…I was scared man, I thought you were so mad at me, I wrote to you nearly every day and you didn’t even answer one-”

“Alex-”

“You haven’t said a thing to me since you told me to leave you alone,” Alexander continued, ignoring him. “You said ‘leave you alone’ and then you fucked off to South Carolina and I didn’t hear from you for a month. Not even to tell me you weren’t mad, not even to say you needed space-”

“I’m not discussing this,” Laurens said.

His heart was pounding, he could hear it throbbing against his ear drums. The jubilant noise from the other room had been replaced by a distinct buzzing, the kind that usually proceeded a fainting fit, or a panic attack and his palms were sweating. Already he could feel the urge to vomit rising in his gut. Alexander stared at him and a new look had come into his face, one that was indignant but also desperate and pleading. Laurens couldn’t bear to look at it.

“Why?” he asked plaintively. _“Why,_ John? Surely if we just…if we just talked about what happened…I tried to forget, to pretend like you did but I can’t do it. I wasn’t made that way. I can’t get it out of my head, I can’t stop thinking about it…I don’t know if I even want to-”

“Shut up.”

The buzzing in his ears was growing louder. He tried to slow his breathing, conscious of how fast his heart was racing against his pulse. Never one to take being told to be quiet especially well, Alexander’s eyes narrowed, his scowl deepening as he folded his arms protectively across his chest.

“I don’t get,” he hissed. “Why this is such a big deal to you. I fucking liked it, okay? I fucking like _you,_ I don’t see why that’s such a problem!”

“I told you, I’m not discussing this.”

“I get that you’re scared. Okay, I get it. But I need to talk about it Laurens or I’m going to _explode_ please, please can we just-”

Laurens kicked a chair. The legs, already splintering from age and abuse buckled and broke. Alex started, his gaze shifting from Laurens’ face to the floorboards. It took him a second to shake himself back and by that time Laurens had already left the room, slamming the door behind him.

The encampment was encircled by woods, the very woods that Alex, Tilghman and Meade had been patrolling for spies. Laurens headed straight for the trees, his ever-present pistol bouncing against his hip. It was a beautiful piece, ornate, and he knew its exact weight and balance like he knew his own hand. As he walked he transferred his thoughts to the steady rhythm of it, slowing his breathing so that he kept in time and eventually the sound of his heart faded so that he could no longer hear it hammering in his ears, threatening to burst the very drums.

He walked until when he looked behind him he could no longer see the camp. Stopping before one of the trees he let his forehead fall against the trunk, feeling the rough bark against his skull as he pressed hard. His palms were still clammy, his skin still itched but at least he could no longer hear buzzing. It was as if the dark damp of the woods had seeped into his veins, cooling his blood as it recognised him as one of their own. A dark, damp thing; undeserving of sunlight. Laurens clenched his fists, hard enough that the little half-moons of his nails drew blood.

Pressing his forehead deeper into the tree, he willed his brain not to remember the events that had last sent him scurrying for the refuge of a forest. A stubborn revolutionary in the face of such a command his mind rebelled, images kicking disdainfully at the walls he had spent a month constructing and flooding past in endless assault; trees surrounding a dark circle where a fickle fire cast an alternating glow, fresh pine and wood smoke and Alexander, laying naked and shivering in the narrow half-light, the cast of the embers ruby red on his feverish skin. John saw his back arch, head tilting to display the narrow column of his throat to which he couldn’t help but press his mouth; he heard the shallow stutter of Alex’s breath, saw his eyes flicker with the dying flames as his own lips parted. He remembered the noise Alex had made when Laurens first put his hands on his cock and tested the velvet-smooth weight as if it had been the pistol in his hands, hands that now shook as he thought about them resting on the hard plane of Alexander’s abdomen, how the muscles beneath had twitched as sobbing, he spilled hot over them both.

Laurens’ hand was wrapped around the pistol now, his thumb gently grazing the heel. Once, Alexander had walked into the barracks and found Laurens on his knees with the pistol in his mouth. So had followed the most excruciating conversation they had ever had, whereby Laurens had explained to him that he wasn’t going to do it, that if he was ever going to then he would have done it by now, and that actually, all that was important was the reminder of the act, in all its potential existence. The truth was, Laurens had been testing the weight and balance of his pistol since he was fourteen. In the end, it was always fear, rather than self-love, which won out.

He stayed there until it was almost too dark to tell the sky from the trees, at which point he turned and headed back. While the others acknowledged his entrance nobody asked where he had been, including Alexander who sent him one long, inscrutable look before pulling his blanket over his head and burying himself deliberately in Herodotus. Laurens crawled into his own cot, taking a moment to enjoy the long-awaited scratch of the straw and the draught of the threadbare wool, equally indicative of home to him as the sound of the men’s snores that soon filled the barracks, almost but not quite drowning out the rustling of the trees and the mournful dole of the owls outside. He fell asleep.

Hours later, in the middle of the night, he woke. His skin itched.

*

In the morning, it was Washington who reached out to Alex. The General strode into the headquarters while they were eating breakfast and summoned Hamilton once again to his office. The others chewed their stale bread warily but by the time Alexander finally emerged he looked quite cheerful. The General, yielding reluctantly to Alexander’s desire for exploit had sent him on a mission to burn flour mills on the Schuylkill River, before they fell into enemy hands. With him he had dispatched Captain Henry Lee and eight cavalrymen, enough of a force that Alexander knew Washington was trying to give him the illusion of command.

Alexander wasn’t falling for it. He had been on such low-scale, guerrilla missions before. The greatest part of his job was reconnaissance and surveillance, disrupting supplies, raiding said supplies, etcetera ad astra et ultra. However, it had been a while since he had been properly away from headquarters and even longer since he’d been engaged in something potentially risky. Besides, if the only warfare he was going to see was manoeuvre warfare, he supposed he might as well make the most of the opportunity.

“Has anyone met this Captain Lee before?” asked Hamilton, shrugging on his coat and slipping some of breakfast into his pockets to trick Lafayette into thinking he was planning on eating it later.

“I have,” McHenry replied. “He likes to be known as ‘Light-Horse Harry’.”

Alexander snorted. “What a shame for him.”

“I think it’s time we gave ourselves nicknames,” Lafayette suggested. “Seeing as it looks like no one’s going to do it for us.”

“Easy,” Laurens shrugged. A dirty-nailed finger emerged from the ragged ruff of his shirt as he pointed it at each of them. “T-man. Big Mac. Dick Meat. French. Hamiltrash.”

“And yours?”

“Rich.”

Big Mac and Dick Meat laughed. Lafayette sniffed disdainfully. “Charmant,” he said, lip curling in sarcasm. “Although I was thinking of something a little more heroic.”

“Tragi-comedy is the Homeric glory of our age or some shit,” Tilghman shrugged. “Something Pope said.”

“Does anyone wanna hear something really tragic?” asked Hamilton, frowning as he turned his pistol over in his hands. “I think my gun’s broken.”

There was a collective groan around the room. It was a source of great exasperation to the others that Hamilton, who took exemplary care of his personal attire from his boots to his lapel was hopelessly lax when it came to seemingly pointless tasks like cleaning his weapons. There was also the fact that he couldn’t afford much better than a pistol which _didn’t_ fall apart after three months’ usage but no one ever seemed to consider this.

“You’re a mess Alex,” said Lafayette, shaking his head.

“Here,” said Laurens. “Use mine.”

He tossed the pistol at Alexander who caught it one-handed. Turning it over he saw that it was Laurens’ prized piece, the one with the ornate plating. He looked up and met Laurens’ gaze.

“Thanks brother,” he said, and slipped it into his holster.

“Stay safe,” McHenry called after him as he made to step out the door. “No heroics. Tragi-comedy only.”

“Be careful, Alexander,” said Laurens. His voice was grave with sincerity and his gaze bore deeply into Alex’s, even as he chewed at his fingernails and spat them out onto the table. “Look after yourself.”

Alexander nodded and closed the door, just catching Meade’s whining complaint of _“Gross,_ Laurens” before he was reaching his horse and swinging onto the saddle.

The second he felt the touch of cold air on his face, Alex felt his spirits lift. He spurred his horse on until they were cantering out of the encampment, over the steep bank and past the black and green woods, trying to put as much distance as possible between their orphic darkness. The woods made him think of John and instinctively the muscle in his chest clenched, even as his skin prickled with anger.

Laurens had begun the morning acting, as he had done since before he had left for home, as if nothing had ever happened. Alexander, well-attuned to this favourite practice of his was usually content to play along. He had humoured him that first time, when they had been wrestling and suddenly he’d felt something nudge his thigh that decidedly wasn’t Laurens’ knee. He had humoured him when Laurens had walked in on Alexander undressing in his room, and then left quickly, mumbling to himself and knocking over various objects in his haste. Even after he had found Laurens on his knees with a gun in his mouth, even after they had talked and cried and Laurens had been sick more than once, even after _that_ the next day he had humoured him. They had never spoken of it again out loud, the closest they had gotten to doing so being Laurens, lending him that same pistol this morning.

Alexander had known about John for a long time, pretty much as soon as they’d first met. Practically the whole camp did. Laurens didn’t talk about it, but he didn’t exactly keep it a secret either. Mostly it wasn’t that hard to put together. Whenever they went out it was always Laurens who got drunkest, always Laurens who spoiled for a fight. Everybody talked about Hamilton being sanguine but no one mentioned how Laurens was the one who had once beaten a man to death with the butt of his musket, and another with his bare hands. That John Laurens was a self-destructive masochist was as well-known a fact about the camp as Lafayette’s narcissism and Washington’s false teeth.

Laurens didn’t keep himself a secret, nor had his trademark reticence completely disguised his desire for Alexander. Alex, who liked to be wanted and liked John, had quietly gotten on with things; accepting John’s eyes on him when he thought he wasn’t looking, pretending he didn’t notice when he got up in the middle of the night and returned with his cheeks burning crimson. He wanted to be a good friend and he wanted to respect his boundaries by not pressing him too hard on a subject that clearly caused him pain. After all, Alexander had his own shit to deal with. They had a system, and although no one could call it exactly healthy, it worked.

Until a month ago. Washington had sent them on a joint errant, a rendezvous with a reluctant colonel up state. Alexander had known about John for a long time, but he hadn’t been so sure about himself until halfway there, when they had made camp and he’d suggested that because of the cold _(obviously)_ that they share the pallet. Laurens had hesitated but relented and they had snuggled together, the thin blanket barely covering the both of them, Laurens’ forehead against the back of his neck, his arms solid and tight around him and Alex had never felt so warm and happy and safe, like he could withstand anything, even a hurricane should one choose to strike them now. It was so perfect that of course he’d _had_ to ruin it, had to turn around in the circle of John’s arms and press himself against John’s erection, had to take his face in his hands and kiss him.

Alexander remembered a fire, leaping with delight in his chest as John responded not tentatively but eagerly, rising onto his elbows so that the blanket shifted from his muscular back as he explored deeper with his tongue. He could feel him losing control, the careful grip he usually had over himself sliding away and Alexander welcomed it, pressing harder against him and moaning as Laurens’ mouth moved from his to nip at his neck. At the first stroke of his cock he had nearly come there and then but Laurens had worked him slowly, tenderly until he was panting, sobbing, and then lurching forward, tears in his eyes as he shot all over Laurens’ hand where it lay flatly on his stomach.

Afterwards he had reached out to John, tried to curl up against him. But Laurens had sat up, pushed him away. Said “Leave me alone” and marched off into the trees, deaf to Alexander’s pleas echoing after him as his footsteps faded away. When he returned the next morning he didn’t say a word to Alexander, and straight after the rendezvous with the colonel he left for South Carolina. Alexander had written to him, and in his letters he had tried very hard not to sound upset with Laurens. He knew that it wasn’t his fault, that John had been battling such demons a lot longer than he had; still, it was difficult not to blame him a little for forgetting how, for someone who suffered not inconsiderably from abandonment and attachment issues, it might feel to be pushed away immediately after they had come.

Captain Henry Lee was waiting for him with the cavalrymen about a mile down the Schuylkill River. He was a round-faced, bug-eyed man, not lacking in the usual padding that often straddled the waistlines of the sons of Virginian planters. Upon approaching Alexander slid off his horse, nodding formally to the captain who at once stuck out his hand.

“Colonel Hamilton I presume,” he greeted him.

“You presume correctly,” said Hamilton, shaking the proffered hand. “It’s Lee, right?”

“Er, yes,” Lee inclined his head. “Although, you know, a lot of people know me better as ‘Light-Horse Harry’.”

Alexander nodded. “That’s cool,” he said.

There was an awkward silence during which Lee looked very uncomfortable and Alexander enjoyed deliciously. Then Alexander said “Best be getting on with it Hen,” and Lee gave the signal to the troops, looking rather flustered.

There were three major flour mills along the river, looming black and satanic as the hymns had ever spoken. Drawing under the long shadow of Daviser’s Ferry, Hamilton moored a boat to ensure an escape route before stationing two men as sentinels and dispatching the rest to each mill, relishing a mixed trill of pleasure and pride as each cavalryman scurried off to obey his orders. The horses were saddled in abundance with pitch and Alexander and Lee helped unload, passing the flammables to the soldiers who at once set about layering the levels. Soon the smell of burnt flour lay heavy on the air, thick and viscous as tar. Alexander tried not to gag at the stench, holding his collar over his nose as the smoke began to billow around him.

“What now?” asked Lee.

“Now you help the others with the second mill Hen,” Alexander replied, cringing as a beam crashed from the rafters. He gestured to the men behind him. “Me and these guys will take Daviser’s.”

Lee nodded and Hamilton crooked his finger at the three cavalrymen to follow him towards Daviser’s Ferry. The flour was stacked precariously and there was much more to burn; Alexander climbed up the rickety steps to the second level, chucking pitch over the bags in a wavering black circle. Above and below him the other men worked quickly and efficiently; very soon orange flames were licking the rough cloth and spreading onto the wooden floorboards.

Alexander was just flicking out his last match when he heard the warning shot, fired from one of the sentinels.

“Fuck,” he hissed and then raised his hands to his mouth. “Redcoats! Abort!”

Scrambling blindly through the rising smoke, he managed to find the entrance, narrowly avoiding a burning plank as it fell from the doorway. Once outside he wiped his streaming eyes, shouting again for his men who emerged a second later, coughing and holding their coats over their faces. In the distance he could see the British dragoons, galloping towards them with their pistols aloft. Nearer Lee was gathering his men and Alex saw them clambering to remount their horses, just as a second shot fired.

“The boat!” Alex yelled as the British closed in, shouting at his men to follow as he sprinted for the shore.

Upon reaching the boat Alexander and his men leapt in, kicking off from the river’s edge. A scarlet soldier emerged from round the side of the collapsing building, arm outstretched and pistol poised. He fired and the man next to Alexander crumpled with a hoarse cry, clutching his chest. Alexander reached into his holster, withdrawing Laurens’ pistol. He cocked it and pulled the trigger. The British soldier fell from his horse and didn’t move again.

“Faster!” he screamed at the man driving the helm, just as more soldiers appeared on the shoreline, carbines raised.

There was a tremendous shudder as gunshots struck the boat. Alexander felt a jolt of very real fear seize him as bullets littered the hull, just as they reached the current. Instinctively, he seized the body of the fallen soldier and hurled him from the side, the impact of the corpse as it struck the water buffeting the tiny boat against the surge. The British soldiers aimed and shot; Alexander threw himself out of reach just as the man beside him released a cry of pain, hands darting to his shoulder.

The current was strong, incensed to violence by the recent rains. Alexander struggled to control the boat, the previous pilot attempting to stem the flow of blood from his wound, as the British raked the hull with repeated volleys. An enormous hunk of the boat’s side fell away, allowing water to stampede into the newly created cavity, spreading across the entire bottom and Alexander’s heart dropped.

“Oh shit,” he breathed, eyes widening as more and more water began to flood in. “Shit, shit, shit.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for your wonderful comments on the last chapter!! they give me fresh life
> 
> i'm so sorry this chapter took so long; i wrote the first one just before exam period hit and i've basically done nothing but revision this past month. it's also a lot longer than i intended it to be so sorry about that as well.

After Alexander left, Laurens decided to go hunting. Addressing the others, he told them that he was going on patrol but they all knew what he really meant. Tilghman, Meade and Alex had already confirmed there were no spies and there was no reason to believe the British had sent out scouts out overnight. Even so, “patrol” was an easy excuse for whenever anyone wanted fresh air or to stretch their legs and there was nothing here that needed doing that couldn’t wait till later. So Laurens snatched a rifle, a bow and his leather hunting coat from where it lay rumpled in some neglected corner and took off for the woods.

The moment the familiar darkness of the trees enclosed him, Laurens shouldered the rifle. He had brought it just to serve the lie, and off the odd chance he actually _did_ come across a wandering redcoat. In actual fact, he always hunted with bow and arrow. The others teased him for his pretentions and devotion to the aesthetic, to which Laurens always replied there were more than aesthetic benefits to not scaring away every living thing with the sound of a fucking carbine going off, however, in reality it had very little to do with that. The truth was Laurens’ father had taught him to hunt, and Laurens’ father had always used a bow.

The few happy memories he had of his father, John meditated as he fixed a snare at the base of a large firtree, were of hunting together. That had been when John was young, before Henry Laurens had shipped him off to Switzerland and to boarding school. Before he had begun to question the paternal dogma he had learned to swallow before even moving on to solids. Simpler times, when he had been ignorant and happy to follow in the footsteps his father left in the bracken, when a pat on the head and a word of praise was enough to send his heart singing and the bitter fruit of knowledge had yet to spill its seed into the fertile earth of John’s gut. A Paradise, lost.

For a while, Laurens had struggled with the fact that Henry had never beaten him. He felt that there ought to have been some kind of physical violence, in order to justify the feelings that rose like bile whenever Laurens was confronted with his father. Manipulation, emotional exploit and constant disparagement were much more difficult tools of abuse to categorise, as was John’s inability to reconcile his anger against his father with his desperate need to please him. The result was a constant feeling of inadequacy, and a desire for validation that was never quite enough.

But Henry hadn’t beaten him, and Laurens knew well enough that his complaints against a man who was, by all accounts, a liberal and a good patriot would sound to many like the petty whinging of a spoilt brat. When people asked him why he scowled at the generous contributions to the cause made by Henry Laurens, it was easier not to explain. Fortunately, with Alexander, he hadn’t needed to. Because Alexander was a kettle of fish not so different from himself, except while Laurens’ father had been omnipresent enough to significantly blacken his conceptions of God, Alexander’s had simply left.

Laurens finished securing the snare and straightened up, wiping his dirty palms on his breeches. He remembered the first time he and Alex had gotten drunk together. The excited, desperate way with which they had spilled their souls, like two caskets fit to burst from the pressure of such a long silence. Laurens didn’t think he had ever spoken so much and so openly since, regardless of the countless subsequent occasions he had been drunk and mouthy. And even then he hadn’t talked nearly as much as Alexander, who trusted less easily and who had never had someone to whom he could hack open his chest and display the red organs. Even in his current state Laurens had blanched at some of the things Alex had told him, casually, matter-of-factly. as if they could and did happen to anyone. In the morning, when Laurens had questioned him about it he’d shrugged and said “no big deal”. Despite his nonchalance, that was when Laurens had first made the decision to protect Alexander Hamilton.

Laurens moved away from the tree base to scan the area for tracks. There was a small bush a couple of meters away, bleeding with the sort of red berries deer liked to eat. Approaching it, Laurens saw that a number of berries had been snagged away on one side, leaving broken branches and freshly torn leaves. The deer must be nearby.

A rustle of the undergrowth a short distance away confirmed this and Laurens dropped instantly into a crouching position, alert and ears pricked for the slightest movement. The deer was bold and unpreoccupied, sniffing the cold ground for acorns and tearing at leaves as it meandered obliviously through the trees. Not a very bright animal, considering the encampment hunted in these woods often, to the extent that catching a buck like this so quickly was a rare occurrence.

Laurens fixed his bow silently, feeding the arrow through a slot in the branches. His father had taught him how to hunt, he said, because you never knew when you might have to fend for yourself. While Laurens had accepted this at the time, years passed and he thought on this explanation with bitter amusement. There would never be a time when a son of Henry Laurens would have to fend for himself. His father had made quite sure of that; bonds and law tracts wound up within endless webs of psycho-dependency that would endure long after the old man himself kicked the bucket. No, Laurens’ father had taught him to hunt because killing animals was the only way he had of coping with his demons. Laurens understood this, had inherited it to a degree only his catharsis was usually brought about through pain rather than death. Whether he was the inflictor or the recipient it didn’t matter, as long as he was able to lose himself for just a second, to experience the violence that had never been between him and Henry.

He didn’t need anyone to tell him that there was something monstrous in this. Still, it had happened. That time they caught a redcoat, and Laurens had beaten him to death with his musket before they could get a single word out of him. He saw the look on Alexander’s face, pale, wide-eyed, like he was seeing him for the first time. Laurens had been glad of it, had wanted Alexander to see what he was trying to keep from corrupting him. Except it hadn’t worked because despite his best efforts, somehow John’s poison had still spread into Alexander’s veins.

The buck lifted its head, nostrils twitching at the catch of an unfamiliar scent. Laurens pulled back the bowstring, the knuckles of his curled fingers brushing his mouth. Instead of letting the arrow fly, however, he hesitated.

The deer pawed at the ground nervously, velveteen ears pricked. Laurens could sense its fear, its wary knowledge that there was something out there, a smell of darkness that clung to the trees; predatory and corrupt. A thing out of nature.

The hand on the string trembled and Laurens lowered his bow. The deer ran away.

*

When Laurens returned there was no one at headquarters apart from Lafayette, who was sat at the table sorting through post. He looked up when he entered, casting a disparaging eye over the two skinny conies Laurens had draped over his shoulders.

“No deer?” he asked disappointedly.

Laurens shook his head. “Not one,” he replied. “Must’ve grown cautious.”

Lafayette pulled a face. “Shame,” he said. “I have a sudden fancy for venison.”

He returned to scribbling envelopes while Laurens hung the conies in storage to deal with later. When he came back Lafayette was still scribbling, his quill darting across the page with a speed that suggested undivided attention, however, when he spoke to Laurens his words were measured and deliberate.

“Did you make up with Alexander, then?” he asked without looking up.

Laurens stopped, frowned. “What?”

“After your fight,” Lafayette confirmed. “You seem to be friends again.”

“We’re always friends,” said John irritably.

Lafayette made a humming noise at the back of his throat which somehow managed to convey both agreement and scepticism.  Laurens stood uncertainly in the centre of the room, one foot poised halfway towards the door.

“What?” he asked. “Has Alexander said something different?”

Lafayette shrugged. “Just his manner of late,” he responded mildly. “It has suggested this to be…an issue of some concern.”

“If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”

Instead of responding, Lafayette continued to write. The nib of the quill scratched doggedly across the paper, harsh and grating. Laurens found it suddenly unbearable.

At last he put the pen down, looking Laurens directly in the eye. “Very well,” said the Frenchman, voice steely. “I shall say it. Forgive me my crassness, but it seems to be me that recently, you have been treating your ‘friend’ very poorly.”

Laurens stared at him, affronted even as he felt the heat of guilt creep into his face. “I’m sorry?”

“After your rendezvous with the colonel,” Lafayette explained. “Just before you went off to South Carolina. Alexander came back in a state of great _affolement_ – quite as panicked as I’ve ever seen him. He was very upset. I couldn’t get much out of him, other than he seemed to be under the impression that you were angry with him. For days he shut himself in his room, scribbling away letters to you no doubt, and becoming more and more despondent when they remained unanswered. He seemed quite convinced that you were never going to forgive him. And then all of a sudden you return, cheerful as anything and acting as though everything is normal. You have confused him, John Laurens, and it is not kindly done.”

“Alexander is a drama queen,” Laurens replied briskly. “You know that as well as I do.”

“Yes, I _do_ know that,” Lafayette countered heatedly, eyes flashing. “And what’s more, _you_ know as well as _I_ do why that is. Just once, did it ever cross your mind how it might feel for someone like Alex to be completely cut off without a word of comfort, or reassurance? Think for a moment, s’il te plaît, what that might mean for a person for whom disappointing someone he loves can only _ever_ result in abandonment?”

“Listen bro,” Laurens interrupted, trying not to betray the fledglings of guilt which were already starting to uncurl in his stomach. “I get that you’re protective of Alex and everything and that’s cool, but, like, you don’t even know what happened-”

“-Oh don’t I?” asked Lafayette, raising an eyebrow. _“Don’t I,_ John?”

The blood in Lauren’ veins froze instantly. Lafayette was looking directly at him, his eyes blazing with fire. For what felt like a decade they merely stared at each other, Lafayette’s face hard-lined and grim, John’s pale and bloodless. Laurens tried to speak but found the words robbed from him, leaving his throat dry. In vain he tried again, but Lafayette waved him away dismissively before he could manage a sound.

“No, he didn’t tell me,” he replied in answer to the unspoken question. “But neither of you are particularly difficult to read.”

“Well then,” Laurens forced out once he had found his voice. “Well then, if you know, you’ll understand-”

“Quite the contrary,” Lafayette cut across him smoothly. “I haven’t the slightest understanding of what could prompt a man to torture his friend in such a way-”

 _“Torture?”_ Laurens repeated, in his outrage the word falling out before he could catch it. _“Torture?!”_

“Yes torture,” Lafayette repeated coldly. “You know that Alexander will blame himself and instead of telling him otherwise you are content to let him. Perhaps to ease some of the guilt from yourself, perhaps because you _do_ blame him-”

“I don’t,” said Laurens harshly. It was the truth. Alexander couldn’t be blamed for his own nature. It was in his instinct to endeavour to please, to want to be ever helpful, ever needed. The alternative was, as Lafayette had already pointed out, to be made expendable. Laurens couldn’t rightly fault Alex for wrapping his arms around his neck, for pressing himself against John’s hardening dick and whispering “Let me be good for you”. The guilt lay, and had always lain, in Laurens taking advantage of what he already knew Hamilton couldn’t help.

“Then why do you push him away?” Lafayette persisted. “He wants to be close to you, it is so painfully obvious, yet a single word and you turn to stone. Why are you doing this, John? Why are you punishing your friend-”

“I’m trying to _save_ him!” Laurens yelled. 

Lafayette blinked. The tiny space of the four-walled room was suddenly more quiet than it had ever been. Laurens was aware of his shoulders rising and falling, his own hard breathing as he struggled to control his pulse and his temper. The humming in his ears was distant, not quite blotting out the birds outside the window, the rustling of the trees. When Lafayette spoke, his voice was soft with incredulity. 

“You have never been a believer in God, John,” he said cautiously.

“That’s not true,” said John. “But sometimes the better you know a guy, the less reason you have to like him.”

“You can’t think that what you are is _evil-”_

“I know that what I am,” said Laurens loudly, raising his voice to match Lafayette’s. “Is nothing I would ever wish on anyone else.”

“Jesus Christ,” snarled Lafayette, kicking his chair aside as he got to his feet. “I am _tired_ of this. This self-loathing, this constant flagellation. Your tastes are somewhat…avant-garde. Does that make you a monster? No! You have devils. Who in this goddamned camp _doesn’t?_ What else is it that draws us all here, to serve in this exact moment of history? We are building a new world not because the last one was paradise and roses, but because, for many of us, it was _hell.”_

“For _you_ the old world is hell,” Laurens muttered. “Whither I fly is hell. I myself am hell.”

“Don’t you quote Milton at me, John Laurens! The mind is its own place, and you could make a heaven of it if you so chose! Instead you wallow in misery, hating yourself and the person who would love you if only you would let him-”

“Fuck off,” Laurens spat, temper snapping. “Alexander would love anyone who gave him a pat on the head and told him he was a good boy. You don’t understand. I’ve infected him. He was susceptible, I knew that, and I still couldn’t stop myself. The least I can do now is to try and keep it from spreading.”

Lafayette stared at him. “Jesus Christ,” he said again. “Do you even hear what you sound like?”

Unfortunately, Laurens was devoid of an opportunity to ask, for at that moment Tilghman and Meade walked in.

“Whoa,” said Tilghman, stopping in his tracks as he took in the sight of Laurens and Lafayette, red-faced and breathing heavily as they glared at each other. “Inopportune timing?”

“Not at all,” Lafayette replied briskly, turning away from Laurens to reclaim his seat. “Only John has failed _faire bouillir la marmite._ ”

“You caught nothing?” asked Meade, eyebrows drooping comically in disappointment. 

Laurens gestured over his shoulder. “Couple of conies,” he replied. “Not my fault le Marquis thinks himself too good for the humble Northeastern rabbit.”

“Ce n’est pas le lapin, mais le façon du chasseur,” Lafayette muttered nastily under his breath.

“Any word from Alex and Light-Horse?” asked Tilghman, helping himself to a bottle of wine from the cupboard.

“Too soon I should think,” answered Meade, accepting the glass Tilghman offered him. “If all goes smoothly we should be hearing the whole thing from Alexander.”

“That’s trusting he doesn’t lose his head and get drunk on the power of command,” Laurens said wryly. “Here meaning: over a grand total of _eight.”_

“Eight more than you,” Meade pointed out fairly. 

Laurens made a conceding gesture. “True say,” he acknowledged. “But then, I’m a man of modest ambitions.” 

This statement was met with a disbelieving scoff from around the table, prompting Laurens to raise his shoulders in defence. “What?” he complained as Tench and Lafayette rolled their eyes.

"‘Ooh, I’m Charles Lee,’” said Tilghman, in meta imitation of Laurens’ drunken drawl. “‘I’m going to die in my sleep like a fucking loser.’”

“I refuse to accept there’s anything particularly striving in not wanting to be like Charles Lee.”

“’Ooh, I’m Charles Lee and when I’m dead no one will remember my name except in connection to my immortal chins.’”

“Hey, come on,” Laurens protested. “Wanting to die honourably is not ambitious. On the contrary, it’s the least any of us can ask for.”

“There’s a difference between dying honourably and dying gloriously,” Lafayette pointed out. 

Instead of replying, and thus inviting a second groan of exasperation, Laurens merely looked sceptical.

Tilghman shook his head. “Christ,” he said amusedly. “You and Alexander read too much Greek.”

 _You read too much Pope,_ Laurens thought. _It’s making you settle._ Before he could commit to uttering what he knew was a fairly bitchy comment however, the room’s attention was diverted by McHenry’s entrance as the big man came in with the force of a small tempest, spitting and swearing his mouth off.

“That bloody whoreson Horatio Gates,” he foamed, stripping his pistol belt aggressively from around his waist. “He makes me wish I had a poisoned fucking chalice.”

“Wow a Shakespeare reference,” said Laurens, who clearly hadn’t got enough poison out of his own system. “How sophisticated.”

“What happened?” asked Meade.

“He’s fucking intransigent,” McHenry snarled. “Kicks up a stink of principle any time the General asks him to do the slightest thing. He’s only just confirmed the plans to lead troops to face Burgoyne in Saratoga. If it works out he’ll get all the credit and be heralded as a hero; if it doesn’t, Washington will get the blame for miscommunication. Because he _doesn’t fucking communicate._ Arsehole.”

Having now managed to wrestle off his opponent, he threw the belt onto the table with contempt. The pistol fell out of the holster with a loud clatter. Laurens’ eyes flickered to it briefly before returning to Tench.

“How many troops?” asked Tilghman.

“4,000,” McHenry replied. “Against 5,700.”

“Could be worse.”

“Sure, but that’s assuming the man doesn’t turn around and head for the hills at the first sight of red. I swear to God I’ve never met anyone so disinclined to action since leaving Fort Washington.”

“Apart from your mistress.”

“Thanks, John.”

“Hold on,” said Meade. “Is this the guy who pretended to be sick just to get out of the night attack after Ticonderoga?”

“Before travelling straight to Baltimore to bitch to Congress about who should be commanding the Continental Army,” nodded Lafayette. “That’s the one.”

“Then Phil Schuyler got the blame for losing the Fort,” Laurens supplied. “Even though Gates had a pretty lengthy command in the region.”

Meade pulled a face. “What a bitch.”

McHenry shook his head slowly, hands on his hips and face sour. “He won’t rest until he has Washington supplanted,” he said. “Even so the General could deal with that, if the rest of the time he just did what he was bloody _told.”_

He was broken off by a sharp knock on the door. The men looked at each other quizzically, silently counting their number. Anyone who was familiar to them knew well enough, when Washington wasn’t here, to walk straight in. Then a small, tentative voice called “Letter, sir,” and five pairs of shoulders slumped with lethargy.

“I’ll get it,” said Meade, getting to his feet when it became increasingly obvious no one else was going to.

“I swear to fuck if it’s from Gates,” grumbled McHenry, rubbing his temples irritably. “I’ve heard enough about the goddamned Battle of Trenton to last me a lifetime.”

“The lady doth protest too much,” quipped Tilghman with a grin. “If it weren’t for you there’d be no one to liaise with him but Washington himself. You do a great service in sparing us that.” 

“Oh well,” grunted McHenry. “Just call me another great martyr to the cause.”

While Tilghman and McHenry toasted, Laurens chanced a glance at Lafayette. He was watching the exchange with a small fond smile but when he caught Laurens looking at him his gaze shifted. He pursed his thin lips, eyes darkening as he raised his eyebrows very slightly in question and Laurens knew with a bitter certainty that their conversation wasn’t over. Grimly, he wondered whether he might not be better off making his excuses and finding an empty room where he and Laf could hash it out. Lafayette had gotten very close to making him feel ashamed of himself and he thought it was probably only right that he continue. Usually, he was so used to making himself feel guilty that when someone else managed it came as quite a pleasant surprise.

“What’s up?” asked Tilghman once Meade re-entered. “Did we lose Saratoga already?”

Meade shook his head. His face was very white. He opened his mouth, closed it, tried again. “It’s from Captain Lee,” he said.

John didn’t hear the words that followed. The tide came rushing into his ears, deafening him to any sound but a devastating roar. It flooded his head, crashed against the walls of his skull even as he watched Meade’s mouth move, forming words that he couldn’t follow; _His boat besieged…current too strong…none of them made it…_ words that meant nothing, signified nothing. Someone let out a strangled sob, looking to his left he saw it was Lafayette. One white aristocratic hand over his mouth, eyes sparkling with disbelieving tears. Shaking his head like it wasn’t true. Tilghman and McHenry frowning like Meade was reading them an article from a dubious newspaper, thinking That’s not right, he’s got the wrong name. Faces changing as the words kept coming, whitening, eyes growing large and then wet as comprehension dawned. John heard none of it, the clashing against his skull giving him no room but for one thought: McHenry’s pistol laying on the table.

“JOHN, NO!” 

Lafayette’s scream tore through him, louder in John’s head than the shot which followed. Laurens felt his arm being wrenched away before he was aware of the sound of breaking glass and a massive force barrelling into him, knocking him off his feet. The gun was torn out of his hand; he scrabbled for it but there was something pinning him down. He kicked up at it, thrashing within its grip but it held fast, gripping his arms so tight that he couldn’t shove it away. A flash of pain came somewhere around his jaw. Laurens blinked, confused as the world before him swum briefly before his eyes, before it was swallowed up by the darkness.

*

Alexander was not dead.

This was absolutely no one’s fault.

The boat had filled up with water quickly, until very soon it was part of the way under. Glancing behind him at the redcoats, still firing shots at him from the shore, and an impending wave that promised swift destruction if he didn’t get the physics right, Hamilton decided to defy literary tradition and take his chances with Nature.

The wave tore into the boat, ripping through boards and rafters as if it were gossamer. Alexander was already in the water, one arm supporting the injured man as the mast broke in two, smashing into the surface like a Babylonian turret. Three seconds earlier and they would have fallen victim to it, or else been trapped by debris and hauled under the weight of gravity. 

The wounded man was heavy and groaning. Alexander turned to look for the other to help support him and saw the British, a few of them staggering backwards at such a reckless display of daring bravery, however they had recovered and the carbines were poised. A few gunshots rang out, volcanic jets of water shooting up around Alexander as the bullets hit the surface. He took a deep breath and dived under, pulling the injured man after him.

Alexander plunged headlong through the murk of the Schuylkill, avoiding the bullets that rained after him, tearing a trail of silver pearls in their wake. Ahead of him he could see the boots of the last soldier from the boat kicking out. He stayed under a long time, putting the hours spent in the Caribbean suffering from pneumonia after pushing himself to the limit to good use, until the man on his back slapped his arm frantically and he shot upwards, taking swift lungfuls of crisp cold air. Hearing them cough and splutter, the soldier in front stopped and turned around, raising a hand over his eyes to peer at the shoreline.

“They’re out of reach,” he said, voice nearly breaking with relief.

Hamilton nodded. “Just about,” he said. “Help me with this guy.”

The soldier hastened to his side. As Hamilton lifted the injured man’s arm so that it was wrapped around both their shoulders, he released a long, laboured groan. The other man looked at Hamilton and Alex saw his own hesitant fear reflected there.

“Do you think he’s-?” the words trailed out. _Gonna make it._ Words potentially fatal for a still breathing man to hear.

In answer, the soldier released another wheeze of pain. Alexander checked the wound. Even through the makeshift bandage the blood was flowing thick and fast, dark vines blossoming into the brown river. His cheek was chalk-grey and clammy. Alexander patted it lightly. “He’s ok.”

The other guy looked doubtful. “I don’t know man,” he said. “Maybe we should…”

 _Leave him._ The unspoken suggestion annoyed Alexander. If you had the courage to abandon a dying man, you should have the courage to say so. He shook his head. “Nah,” said Alexander, addressing the man whose head was currently lolling flimsily on his neck and ruffling his hair. “He’s groovy. Aren’t you, my guy? Bro? Hey man, what’s your name?”

The dying man’s eyelids flickered, shining and grey like the inside of an oyster shell. His lips parted and Hamilton had to lean in close to hear him. “John.”

Alexander ticked off another box on his list of reasons to fuck up the Universe, once he became a god.

“Ok Jack,” he said, always the improviser. “I’m gonna call you Jack, if that’s ok. You got a wife, Jack? Any kids?”

“A daughter,” muttered Jack. “My wife…she’s pregnant.”

“Mazal tov,” said Alexander. “Blessings and joy. Now listen, Jack. What I want you to do is think real hard about your wife and kids, okay? Can you do that for me, buddy? You’re groovy, man. Nothing that a bit of gauze won’t fix. And you know what, the river will flush all that bad shit right out. Trust me, I know science.”

The man groaned in response. Meanwhile, the other soldier’s nod was that of a one humouring a lunatic.

“What now?” he asked. 

“Now,” replied Alexander grimly, lifting his gaze from Jack’s bloodless face. “We swim.”

Contrary to what his build might suggest Alexander was a good swimmer, the proximity of the beach having been Navis’ one saving grace. Possessing a viscous lust for competition even at a young age, he had spent much of his childhood making good his boasts and there had been few boys who could beat him in a race. Even so, traversing the Schuylkill while half-carrying a dying man and balancing the dragging weight of another was no mean feat. Alexander tried not to think about the strain on his limbs as he pushed through the water, instead focusing on his breathing and trying to keep it in time with his kicking feet.

After what felt like an age of forcing his body forward, of losing his rhythm and coming up with mouthfuls of dirty water the riverbank was suddenly within reach. Alexander helped the others clamber ashore the muddy slope, at which point they promptly collapsed onto their backs, sputtering river water. Alexander stayed on his feet, surveying his surroundings. There were a couple of wooden boats tied to a tree stump a few meters away which meant habitants must be nearby. Alexander peered at the ground for signs of a beaten track; sure enough there was an clear path marked by footsteps and horse hooves, leading away from the bank and toward a cart road. Alexander gestured to it. 

“This way,” he said. “With any luck, in a mile we’ll be within town reach.”

In lieu of reply, Jack released another rattling groan. Hamilton crossed over to him swiftly, bending down to peer at the wound. The entire bandage was sodden and crimson. Swiftly, Hamilton tore the sleeve of his own shirt and wound it tightly round the man’s shoulder, ignoring his pained whimpers and increasingly sallow complexion. "You’re doing great buddy,” he reassured as he worked. “Nearly there.” He tied off the bandage and together he and the other soldier hauled the wincing man to his feet before beginning the trek down the cart road.

Whether it was the jubilation of having escaped near death or the tantalising proximity of safety, the one and a half miles before they caught any further sight of civilisation felt like double the length of the Schuylkill. When finally the tips of the thatched roofs came into view, signifying the settlement Hamilton had prayed existed, his knees very nearly buckled with euphoria. It took every effort he possessed to keep himself upright in order to support Jack’s sagging weight as they hobbled into the small town. Devoid of the luxury of questioning whether this was a region sympathetic to patriot cause, Hamilton shouted desperately for help and accepted the aid of the first man and woman who rushed into their path with gratitude. Alexander helped carry Jack into the couple’s home and laid him down on the kitchen table, swiftly clearing it of refuse and yelling for a doctor. After making sure Jack had been safely delivered into the gentleman’s hands, Alexander was calling for pen and paper and when both were provided wasted no time in setting one to the other in a hasty letter to John Hancock.

_Sir,_

_forgive the assumption u’ll have heard of GW’s plan for the mills along SchKl River. regret 2 inform it’s all gone a bit tits up. Had barely reached the bank when we were fired on by enemy. escaped in boat but got wrecked. 1 man dead the other wounded. Remaining boats now in red hands. Also I lost my horse._

_british coming 2nite. if Congress hasn’t already left Phil pls do so ASAP!! _

_i have the hnr 2 b ur obedient servant_

_A._ _Ham_

“Get this to John Hancock,” he told the messenger summoned for him. “As fast as if your entire nation depended on it.”

Once the messenger had left, Alexander turned back to address the doctor who had now fished out the bullet from Jack’s shoulder and was moving to close up the wound. “How is he, doc?”

“He’s lost a lot of blood,” the doctor replied without looking up. “But providing it doesn’t fester, he should live.”

Alexander allowed the tension he had been holding in since the boat dive to leave his limbs. Peering through the dimly lit room at Jack’s body twitching on the kitchen table, he saw that he had not been lying about the blood. Every surface within an inch of the soldier was swimming, the doctors’ implements looking ruby-encrusted in the flickering orange light. However, apart from a small crease between his eyebrows Jack’s face was calm, although that could have had something to do with the half a bottle of whiskey that now sat beside him.

“What shall I do, sir?” asked the other soldier, who was standing around somewhat nervously.

Hamilton gestured to Jack. “Stay with him,” he replied. “When he’s fit you can ride to Congress, give them the low down on what happened. Make sure he gets home first, though.”

“Sir,” came a small, feeble voice and Hamilton realised the near-corpse was speaking to him. “Colonel Hamilton sir, I owe you my life.”

Alexander waved dismissively. “Consider it a write off,” he said. “I’ve got more souls than I know what to do with and, between you and me, a bunch of them are more than a little embarrassing.”

Jack shook his head weakly. “Our son,” he muttered. “When our son is born…his name’ll be Alexander.”

Touched, Alexander grinned; feeling as though there was something warm and butter-yellow swelling in his chest. He patted the man’s hand, trying not to betray too much sentiment even as he felt a little bit like tearing up. “It was all you man,” he said. “Good luck, Jack. Give my best to your wife and kids. They’re lucky to have you.”

They shook hands. Then Alex stood up, told the doctor to take good care of him and left. A horse was waiting for him outside. As Alexander patted the neck of the borrowed beast he felt a pang for his own horse, stolen no doubt by bastard redcoats, if she hadn’t been shot in the skirmish. Trying not to add this loss to his ever-growing list of guilts, Alexander mounted the horse and kicked off.

*

An hour had passed since Meade had read out the news and during that hour, Washington had been informed. His reaction had been an unexpected one; his face morphing as he listened, lines of age and too many cares wriggling in a mass of violent confusion before making his excuses and heading off to his office with a word that he was not to be disturbed. He had not come out since and no one seemed to want to get too close to the door, for the fear that His Excellency, the pride of Mount Vernon and righteous leader of the patriot cause, might be crying.

Meanwhile, Laurens had spent the hour tied to a chair in the storage room. He had recently figured out that it was in fact McHenry who had wrenched his gun from Laurens’ hands before pinning him to the ground and knocking him out cold. Laurens’ jaw hurt and when he moved his mouth it made a clicking noise. Still, there were no hard feelings. Laurens was glad McHenry had stopped him from shooting himself. If he hadn’t, then after eight years of testing the balance and weight of his pistol Laurens would finally have succeeded, and every redcoat in Pennsylvania would still be alive.

He could hear voices on the other side of the door, harried and anxious. Talking about him. Laurens caught Lafayette, more high-pitched and throaty than usual in his distress, speculating on how long they would have to keep him tied up. None of them wanted to let him loose for fear of what he would do to himself. Laurens had laughed bitterly upon realising they had removed all sharp things from his immediate vicinity. They needn’t have worried; the reflexive instinct that had Laurens reaching for McHenry’s pistol with the intention of blowing his brains out had passed to be replaced by a fiery itch beneath his skin, a compulsive yearning that could and would only be satisfied by blood.

It wasn't far from the nearest redcoat camp. Laurens would take his bow, it would make less noise. Besides, Alexander had his gun. Laurens forced his mind away from Alex glancing over the ornate plating, his hard, blue eyes flickering up to meet John’s, his quiet _Thanks, brother_ and concentrated instead on the imagined feeling of pressing down on a redcoat’s windpipe with his thumbs.

The front door opened and slammed shut. On the other side of the door the voices grew hushed, to be replaced by the sound of muffled footsteps. Possibly Washington had seen fit to come out of his shell. Laurens’ head fell against the back of his chair, his eyes drifting closed. It was easier to think about avenging Alexander than it was to think about Alexander. The latter he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to bear again. Anytime Alex’s face swam before him, stricken and desperate with his voice begging _“Please, John”_ he sent it away and pictured instead a redcoat soldier, on his knees with tears streaming down his face.

Suddenly, Laurens’ ears exploded with the sound of laughter. His eyes flew open. The laughter was growing louder, uproarious and choked with screams and sobbing. He struggled against the rope which tied him, not daring to hope but searing with the desire to find out what was going on. For a few moments he strained to hear over the commotion, then someone was shouting “John!” followed by hasty boots on the wooden floorboards. Laurens squinted as the crack of light widened before it came flooding into the space of the dimly lit storeroom. He blinked and saw none other than Lafayette, beaming down at him.

“Oh John,” he croaked and it was if the sun shone from his skin. “John…come quickly!”

“I’m tied up,” said John. 

The bonds were cut and Laurens stood, rubbing his wrists dazedly as he clambered out of the storage room. The space had parted like the waves for Moses; Washington, McHenry, Tilghman and Meade all smiling at him with tears in their eyes. And in the centre, sopping wet, looking entirely perplexed and decidedly not-dead, was Alexander.

“Hey bro,” said Alexander. He glanced down at John’s welted wrists and frowned. “What were you doing back there?”

John shook his head, crossing the room swiftly. “Nothing,” he said. “Just waiting for you.”

Alexander barely had time to utter a noise of surprise before John’s arms were sweeping over him, hugging him tightly. Laurens felt Alexander’s small body slacken immediately, his arms coming up to wrap around Laurens’ waist, fingers digging sharply into the material of his coat. Laurens pulled him closer, laying his forehead into the crook between shoulder and jaw. He breathed in deeply. Alexander smelt of sweat, horse and river water. His pulse fluttered against Laurens’ forehead, sturdy and loud. Despite the layers of damp clothing his body was warm, his skin blushing pink with the blood that rushed, still so close to the surface.

Alexander made a mewling sound. “This is nice,” he said after a while, voice betraying his bemusement. “Can I ask the occasion?”

“We thought you were dead,” Tilghman explained. 

Above his eyes, warm with the pleasure and affection of Laurens’ embrace, Alexander’s brows wriggled in confusion. “What?” he said. “Why?”

“A letter came from Lee,” Meade explained. “It said you were attacked by redcoats at the river, that your boat was destroyed. He said that none of you survived.”

Hamilton snorted, detaching himself from Laurens’ grip to place his hands challengingly on his hip. “If Captain Light-Horse Harry Lee had stuck around for a _second_ longer,” he remarked with scorn. “He might have noticed that _three_ of us survived, the one casualty being some poor bastard I had to toss overboard just to stop the boat from sinking.” He broke off to shiver violently, drawing his sodden coat more tightly around himself. “Can I have some fresh clothes, please?”

The humble request was met with an ecstatic laugh and the clothes were fetched, along with hot water and several blankets and towels that, after washing, Alexander immediately burrowed into, his face peeking out from the cocoon to make sarcastic comments concerning royal treatment but evidently enjoying the attention. Laurens, unwilling to let Alexander move more than a foot away from him sat close by, one arm unfailingly tight around his tiny waist. If Alexander found anything strange in this new clinginess he didn’t show it, instead sighing contentedly into Laurens’ hold and leaning against him, stringy threads of damp, dark red hair bleeding drops of water onto his shoulder.

They kept like that even as Alex talked, filling them in on everything that had happened at Schuylkill, stopping only to take sips of the red wine Tilghman had heated for him. As the others asked him questions, Laurens’ hand moved up and down Alexander’s arm. He hadn’t said a word since Alexander had turned up and wasn’t planning on it. There was a part of him which still feared this was some kind of trick, or a dream, and if he spoke then he would somehow break the spell. In any case the others did all the talking for him, allowing him to concentrate on the firm certainty of Alexander’s muscle beneath his hands, the increasing heat of his skin beneath Laurens’ touch.

When the report was done and Alexander had finally exhausted himself talking, Washington stood up, clapped him on the back and called for double the regular rations of whiskey. Laurens was obliged to let go of Alex as it became swiftly evident that this evening would be a celebration, and he was required to go round each of his friends and hug them again, including the General who called him “m’boy” and looked on the verge of bursting into tears. 

"Well," Alexander said, in response to the crowd that demanded his good health. "If there's one decent thing to come out of this, at least I'm not scared of hurricanes anymore." 

"Yeah?" asked Meade. "Howsat?" 

"I have a new fear," Alexander explained. "Shipwrecks." 

Everybody laughed. Laurens watched the scene unfold before him, his insides too thick with happiness to actively participate. If he thought anything at all it was the one thing, over and over like a mantra: _He’s back, he’s back, he’s back_

“Are you okay?” Tilghman whispered in his ear. 

Laurens nodded. “Yes,” he replied. “Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.”

Tilghman grinned, shook his head. “Amazing,” he said, voice filled with awe. “If any one of us was going to come back from the dead, of course it would be bloody Alexander.”

“It’s the Greek,” said Laurens and Tilghman laughed.

As Tilghman went off in search of more whiskey, Laurens’ eye was caught by Lafayette, ushering Alexander away and into a corner where he began to speak very urgently, lips curling in fast-moving French. Alexander listened without saying anything and when he came back his face was troubled. Laurens attempted to catch his eye and when that proved vain tried Lafayette’s, however, after apparently having fulfilled whatever personal duty he had taken on himself, the Frenchman seemed rather disinclined to further conversation and avoided Laurens’ efforts.

At long last the whiskey glasses were cleared away, Washington with a last watery, wordless glance at Hamilton had retired to his office, singing _My Son Ted_ quietly under his breath and Alexander, rolling his eyes, clearly took this as a queue to leave. With a last significant look at Lafayette which meant they were not to be disturbed, he took Laurens’ arm and directed him towards the barracks, stepping gingerly around McHenry and Tilghman who were both laying on the floor.

Alexander seemed to take quite a long time making sure the door was shut securely, and when he turned to face Laurens his cheeks were faintly pink. Laurens forced himself to hold the gaze, made himself stare into the face that just a few hours ago he had been sure he would never see again. Alexander took his bottom lip between his teeth, dragged it back and forth. The barracks were cavernous and silent but for a frantic, erratic thumping, yet it was not his own heart that Laurens was aware of.

“Thanks for the gun,” said Hamilton at last, quick fingers going to his holster and withdrawing John’s pistol. “It saved my life.”

Laurens caught it, slipped it automatically into his back pocket. “You’re welcome.”

Alexander nodded, chewed his lip. “One of the guys with me,” he said after a long while. “The one who got shot. His name was John, can you believe it? I saved his life, we dived off the boat together just as this wave was coming…well not really a wave because it was a river but it was big, you know, because of the rains…anyway, the boat got destroyed so I had to like, swim to safety with him on my back even though the other guy we were with wanted to leave him behind. By the time we got to the shore he was bleeding like a sonofabitch but the doctor said he’s gonna be fine and so guess what, now he’s gonna call his _son_ after me. Alexander. Ha. John and Alexander. Isn’t that funny?”

Rambling ceased, Alexander ran a hand through his damp hair. Even with his new clothing, fresh and warm from the linen closet he looked like a drowned thing; a pale prince of mythic legend, brought back to life from some dark, wet corner and demanding recompense. Laurens heard the words before they fell from Alexander’s mouth; the quiet, fearful procuration that would betray him counterfeit: “Say something, John?”

The sound that came from Laurens was no forgery but a strangled sob. “I’m sorry.”

His knees were collapsing beneath him. Alexander rushed forward, catching him just before he hit the floorboards. Laurens was crying, hadn’t meant to but once he started he found that he couldn’t stop. It was all so overwhelming. Alexander dying, Alexander being gone forever and then suddenly not gone but back again, in front of him. Laurens had barely had a chance to process Alexander’s death let alone his resurrection and now it was all flooding out at once, the pain of loss crashing together with relief in one earth-shattering wave until his chest was wracked and sore with it. As he cried, fingernails digging into Alex’s flesh like fishhooks Hamilton stroked the back of his head, responding to Laurens’ feverish mutterings of _don’t do it again, don’t do it again_ with _I won’t, I promise, mon amour, chéri, je suis tellement désolé je ne savais pas je ne voulais pas te blasser Laurens I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry._

Eventually, the sea ran dry. John clutched Alexander, his face turned into his shoulder, shaking as he tried to steady his breathing. Alexander kept babbling in his ear, sometimes in French, an inexhaustible stream of apologies and reassurances as his own tears dripped onto Laurens’ back. Finally, when they were both quiet Alexander leaned back, dropping his arms from around Laurens and looking him squarely in the face. “We need to talk,” he said.

Laurens dropped his head into his hands. “Not now, Alexander.”

“Yes now,” Alex retorted tersely. “If not now, when? Are you going to wait till the next time I die before you touch me again?”

“Don’t,” said Laurens sharply, glaring at him.

“Oh alright. I suppose I’ll just hold on to your pistol in that case, considering what good work silence seems to be doing for you-”

“Enough,” said Laurens through gritted teeth but Alex shook his head. 

“No John,” he replied. “We tried your way. It didn’t work. Lafayette told me what you nearly did, when you heard I was killed. I’m not going to sit around and wait to see which one of us bites it first before at least…at least _trying_ to talk about it. I like you. I like looking at you. I liked kissing you, and if that makes me a monster then fuck it, I don’t care-”

“-You don’t even know what that word means,” Laurens interrupted furiously. “You have no _idea_ what it means, what any of it…Alex, the only reason you’re talking this way is because I _did_ this to you. You would be normal if it wasn’t for me.”

“You can say that,” retorted Alex, just as angrily. “You keep saying that but Laurens, you’re always saying this is what you are. Someone asks ‘how about you just don’t’ and you laugh and say it’s not like that…it’s not something you choose…what if I’m the same way? What if I always have been and I just didn’t realise it until I met you-”

“-You’re not. It’s not. You don’t know anything about it, so just shut up.”

“Okay,” Alexander raised his palms, a gesture of surrender. “Fine. You’re right. I don’t know anything about it. But let’s be real then, because if I am ‘corrupted’ or whatever, then we both know it probably happened a long time before I met you. So you can take whatever board you’re flagellating yourself with and chuck it in the fucking Hudson for all I-”

“-Can you not see,” Laurens hissed, cutting him off. “That that is _part of the problem?”_

Alexander blinked at him. “What?” 

“Alex, you _cried.”_

A beat. The room seemed to swell around the words, silence lingering in the air as a frown blossomed across Alexander’s brow. “I…” he said, still blinking with bewilderment. “Well _yeah,_ but I wasn’t _upset._ It was just a lot. God Laurens, I cried when McHenry got _beef sauce_ on my new _shirt,_ you can’t seriously…Jesus, is that why you walked _off?_ What did you think, that I was putting myself through some kind of hell for you?”

“I think that you want to please people,” answered Laurens, cheeks burning. “And that you would put yourself through hell, if you thought it would mean making me happy.” 

“Oh well, thank you very much for my perceived selflessness man, but I’m not a fucking martyr,” Alexander snarled sarcastically. “Or a masochist, unlike _some_ people. I don’t like pain, thanks. And I certainly was not _in_ pain. I was in very… _un_ pain. The only thing _painful_ about the experience was when you suddenly got up and left.”

He crossed his arms, fixing Laurens with a hard, judgemental look. Laurens dropped his gaze uncomfortably, recalling Lafayette’s assessment of his behaviour. 

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled eventually, shamefaced. “I should have realised.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Hamilton drawled sardonically.

“I really am sorry, Alexander,” said John earnestly. “Honestly, I wasn’t thinking.”

“That’s just _it_ with you Laurens,” Alexander burst out, frustration, long pent-up heating his words. “Sometimes you just don’t _think_ about other people. You’re not…you’re not selfish but God, sometimes you can be so self-absorbed, so thoughtless…you say I don’t know what I want but how can you know, when you never _once_ even checked in-”

Laurens reached up and, grabbing a handful of Alexander’s dark auburn hair, wrenched his head forward, pressing their lips together. The kiss, if it could be called that, was hard and bruising; mouths smashing together in painful incoordination. Laurens tugged hard at Alexander’s hair, dragging his teeth across his bottom lip as their jaws bumped and scraped against each other. After barely three seconds Laurens released him sharply and Alexander nearly fell back against the floor, blinking dazedly.

“There,” said Laurens savagely, snarling through the tears forcing their way through.“There. Is that what you wanted?”

Alexander shook his head. His eyes were wide as he stared at John and his face was very pale. He was breathing hard, thin chest rising and falling over the arch of his body, pulled taut as a bow string. “No,” he said. He stretched out a hand and held it against John’s face. When Laurens didn’t move it, he leaned in.

It was soft. Alexander’s lips closed gently over Laurens’, at once yielding and persuasive. His mouth was warm and Laurens found himself breathing him in, tension flooding from his limbs as Alexander kissed him slowly, softly, like John was a glass thing and he was scared of breaking him. Their mouths opened and closed around each other, and then Alex was pressing deeper and Laurens felt his tongue, slipping hot and wet to caress his mouth. He felt a stirring in between his legs and he tilted his head backwards, allowing Alexander better access as the heat pooled in his abdomen.

Alexander moaned. Laurens’ eyes flickered open and he wrenched himself away.

“No,” he said, despite every fibre of his being screaming objection. “No, Alexander-”

“-What?” asked Alex. His lips were parted, still mid-kiss and his eyes were wild, charged with something new, some strange fire that John had never seen before. _“What_ Laurens? I’m not going to apologise for this. I’m not going to apologise for wanting you. Why are you trying to make me feel bad about myself?”

“Because you _should,”_ Laurens fumbled, flustered, although it was difficult to remember why when his lips were still thrumming with the memory of Alexander’s, when every nerve in his body was imploring to feel them again. The obvious answer was still there, needle sharp at the back of his brain: _Because you’ve never apologised for a damn thing in your life,_ it said. _Except for being alive._

A dark wing of something flickered across Alexander’s face and Laurens realised he had heard the unspoken words. A muscle shifted in his jaw and for a moment Laurens thought he was going to pull away. But then his fingers went to brush Laurens’. “I’m done saying sorry John,” he said and Laurens shivered. “You should be too.”

His fingers stroked John’s jaw line, moving down to clasp the back of his neck and bunching the material of his collar. He hesitated, eyes flickering down to Laurens’ lips. Before he could fit words to the question however Laurens was surging forward, claiming Alex’s mouth fiercely with his own. Alexander let out a gentle _ooft_ of surprise as Laurens kissed him, his thumb rubbing against the jut of Alexander’s cheekbone. He felt the curve of Alexander’s smile, felt his long eyelashes flutter prettily as he gasped for air and all at once Laurens’ self-control fell away. He kissed Alexander with the ferocity of a starving animal, desperately seeking to fill the cavity that had been aching inside him for as long as he could remember. His skin no longer itched but was on fire, searing with every flex of Alexander’s grip against the back of his neck.

Alexander was so warm beneath him, so wet and yielding, his mouth so perfectly, lovingly suppliant. Laurens kissed him deeply, trying to taste as much of him as possible with his tongue and Alexander groaned, his whole body seizing up and then suddenly going slack. Laurens was leaning forward, pressing his supple little body against the frame of one of the bunks and Alex allowed himself to be crowded, relishing the feeling of the lack of space taken up by John’s over-powering weight. 

With Alexander’s back cramped against the bunk frame, Laurens arranged his body until he was arching over him, his arms and legs on either side of Alexander’s, his thighs trapped beneath him. They kissed and kissed until Alexander was keening, thrusting his pelvis upwards to meet John’s. A wave of pleasure coursed through him at the contact and Laurens ground down involuntarily, stopping himself when it was overtaken by embarrassment.

“Sorry,” he gasped but Alexander shook his head emphatically. “No,” he breathed out. “Do that…do it again.

Laurens obeyed, grinding his hips down onto Alexander’s and both of them let out a low groan. Once they realised how good it felt they couldn’t stop until suddenly they were rutting against each other, hips rolling together faster and more harried in their desperate search for friction. Laurens’ head fell onto Alexander’s shoulder; he leaned up and kissed his neck, rolling the taut flesh above his collarbone gently between his teeth and Alexander gasped, hands going automatically to span the hot skin under Laurens’ shirt.

“Oh my God,” Laurens whined, squeezing his eyes shut as Alexander’s dry palms dragged over his nipples.

Alexander did it again and again until he was panting, losing track of his rhythm as he continued to rock against him, brain utterly blissed out from the overcrowding of pleasure. He knew that he was close and he stopped, removing Alexander’s hands from his chest and trying not to quail in the face of the responding glare.

“What’s wrong?” asked Alexander, voice high and broken with need.

Instead of replying Laurens kissed him again, his fingers working quickly at the buckle of Hamilton’s belt. Cottoning on, Alex pushed his hips off from the floor to allow Laurens to work down his breeches. Laurens looked down and saw the rosy flush of Alexander’s dick, peeking out from above the edges of his waistband and his heart leapt in his throat. He reached out to hold it through the cloth. It was hot, solid and pulsing beneath his fingertips and Alexander keened, thrusting upwards into John’s palm. It was such a beautiful thing to watch, Alexander twitching and writhing under his touch that he almost did it again, but the little of what Laurens could see of his dick had him imagining what it would taste like, how the thickness of it would feel on his tongue.

He yanked down the remainder of Hamilton’s breeches until they were around his knees and, leaning down, licked an experimental stripe along the length. Alexander whined, jerking forwards but Laurens held him down by his abdomen, taking a moment to work out the dynamics before fitting his mouth around it. 

Laurens had done this countless times in his dreams, had driven himself to distraction imagining Alexander pressed up against a tree or the storehouse door, Laurens mouthing at him until he came apart. It became quickly evident, however, that the reality of the mechanism was far more complex. The moment Laurens’ mouth closed around him Alex lurched forward and Laurens gagged, feeling his throat close off in reflex. He pulled off, shoving Alexander back down and resettled. After adjusting to Alexander’s weight and thickness, he moved his tongue along the underside, attempting to get a feel for the unfamiliar sensation. He tasted strong, musky and Laurens realised, taking in more and more of Alex as his throat relaxed that he _liked_ this feeling, being filled up and overcrowded even as his jaw ached, doubly painful from the force of McHenry’s punch.

Alexander was gabbling above him, nonsensical curses and endearments running into each other and jilting over breathless pants. One hand had wound itself into Laurens’ hair; Laurens wished he would pull it, yank it until the pain was sharp and searing from the root but he couldn’t ask for that without pulling away. Instead Alexander stroked and preened, everything about him high-definition from the rich dark red of his hair to his brilliant bright eyes and rosebud lips, currently stretched wide in shock and bliss.

“Laurens, Laurens,” he was gibbering. “John…chéri…just look at you just look at you oh my God you’re my favourite my absolute favourite you must never leave tu ne doit pas partir je te supplie ne me quitte pas I love you don’t leave…”

Devoid of means to respond Laurens hummed, swiping his tongue over the tip and suddenly Alexander was lurching forwards with a wrangled cry. John let Alexander’s dick fall from his mouth watching with a mixture of fascination and arousal as he came. Alexander was crying; he had one arm thrown over his eyes but Laurens could see the tear tracks marking his cheeks. Laurens leaned up and kissed them, the salt familiar from the taste already on his tongue.

“Alexander,” he whispered. "Alexander?"

Alex breathed out shakily, nodding as his lower half stilled. "I'm alright," he exhaled. "I...went somewhere else, for a second." 

Laurens nodded, having guessed as much. Alex reached for him, pulling him down to fit their lips together. As they kissed Laurens became aware of Alex’s hands, drifting from his waist to the front of his breeches; on reflex he broke off, pulling away sharply.

“No,” he started saying but, catching sight of the look on Alexander’s face the word got stuck halfway.

A thousand thoughts flashed through Laurens’ mind. A thousand reasons to say no, to get up and clean himself off, to walk away and never speak of this again. But as he stared into Alexander’s earnest, trembling, pleading face, every one of those thoughts disappeared like the vaporous fancies they were. He set his jaw and nodded, allowing Alexander to pop open the button of his breeches and slip a hand inside. His dick was so hard it was painful; it took nearly every ounce of control left to him not to grind in an attempt to relieve the ache, but to allow Alexander to take him carefully in hand, to curl his fingers around his length and stroke slowly upwards. 

“Oh,” Alexander exhaled as Laurens released a low whine, dropping his dark head back onto Alexander’s shoulder. “Oh look at you…John, I wish you could look at you. I wish you could see you, how good you are.”

Laurens shook his head. The heat building up in his stomach was almost unbearable, he struggled to anchor himself, focusing on the increased pace of Alexander’s strokes rather than the rise of pleasure inside him.

“You are,” Alexander insisted. “So good John, I wish I could make you see it. You’re the best thing I know.”

Laurens gasped, throwing his head backwards. He could feel himself becoming wetter, Alex’s movements more slick and then he was coming, crying out loud like it had been ripped from him. In his mind he heard cannon fire, battlements and parapets crashing to the ground in a cloud of rubble as the world before him swum and it was almost too much, the feeling of being undone, a feeling that he had never once intended to allow himself. Alexander’s hand was on his back, rubbing him through the aftershocks and maybe this was even more overwhelming, this fierceness with which he wanted even after it was all done with, this desire for the body before him that made him want to laugh and cry and reach for his pistol and never, ever touch it again.

“John,” said Alexander. 

John opened his eyes. Alexander was looking at him uncertainly, eyes wide and mouth slightly open, as though he were preparing himself for the worst. He swallowed. “Don’t send me away again,” he said.

John shook his head. "I won't." 

Alexander's face relaxed. John pulled him in, hugging him tightly and Alexander snuggled into the space between his chin and chest, making himself small. 

"I missed you," Laurens heard. 

Later, he couldn't remember whether it had been he or Alexander who had said it. 

*

They won Saratoga. Burgoyne, a drunken vainglorious man marched into the Hudson Valley with all the pomp and ceremony typical of a high-ranking British officer, only to find himself fighting alone, isolated from Howe who remained in Philadelphia and faced instead with none other than Horatio Gates. The surrender of the 5,700 redcoat troops that made up the entire army proved so huge and thrilling a victory that it almost made up for Gates’ newly inflated ego. While McHenry cursed and muttered darkly about the man’s new status as national hero it was difficult to share into his mood, particularly with the promise of French troops to aid the patriot cause.

The newly increased whiskey rations seemed a thing of the distant past as Washington’s regiment danced around the fire in time to the marching band, who had foregone their usual formality in favour of enough jigs to entertain the port of Boston. Even McHenry forgot to be miserable as he danced arm and arm with Tilghman to the hilarity of the clapping Lafayette, attempting to sing along despite his appalling voice and incongruous accent.

Sitting slightly apart from the others, Laurens and Hamilton looked on with fond amusement. The light of the fire illuminated their faces, bright and smiling with love for their friends and the joy of the immortal evening, warm and glorious against the seasonal cold. Alexander was leaning against Laurens, his head on his shoulder and when the flames weren’t flickering their way they seemed almost to possess one body. It had been like that for some time now. No one mentioned it, it wasn’t something that _needed_ to be mentioned, but everyone had felt the change and weirdly, they were all easier because of it. It was as though some kind of balance had been restored, a ship rendered calm after several long weeks of being tossed at sea.

It wasn’t perfect. Alex was still afraid of hurricanes, and Laurens was still afraid of the dark spaces in the forest that grew inside him. For a while Alexander had tried to convince him that the forest didn’t exist. When it became clear that this was doing more harm than good, he had shifted his tactics to pruning it instead. He had always been a problem solver.

The band slowed on their fiddles, abandoning the jig in favour of the Parting Glass. Alexander turned his face up to look at John, grinning as he mouthed along to the words: _and all the harm that ever I’ve done, alas, it was to none but me._ Laurens returned the smile, found that it came easily.

It was good to be home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _My Son Ted,_ more commonly known as 'Mrs McGrath', was actually first composed in the early 1800s during the Peninsular War but the song was so apt and i love it so i ignored history. there are probably (definitely) other anachronisms and historical inaccuracies (besides language obvs) but this one is i think the most glaring. 
> 
> here's a link to the Bruce Springsteen version of the song if you fancy a listenhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWjzCFAAaw0 and also the the Parting Glass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8xeZ0RqmP8 (it's the Assassins Creed version idc fight me)
> 
> thanks so much for bearing with me and the length, both in between updates and the chapter. i really hope you liked it, please let me know if you did!

**Author's Note:**

> next chapter prepare for reconciliation sex, feelings and emotional porn.
> 
> First Hamilton fic and actually first fic ever to include this much historical stuff in it so please let me know what you think, whether the balance is right, whether you got bored, etc. Alternatively feel free to hit me up on [tumblr](http://scarlett-the-seachild.tumblr.com/)
> 
> thanks for reading! :)


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